This forum, cohosted by the Arms Control Association and the Foreign Policy Initiative, addressed the emerging, “peaceful” nuclear rivalry between China, Japan and South Korea.
Japan has accumulated approximately 11 metric tons of separated plutonium—enough to make roughly 2,500 nuclear bombs—and plans to open a nuclear spent fuel reprocessing plant at Rokkasho in 2018 to strip enough plutonium from spent reactor fuel for an additional 1,500 nuclear warheads annually. China’s new five-year plan includes a proposal to import a reprocessing plant from France with the same capacity. South Korea, meanwhile, insists that it should have the same right to separate plutonium as Japan.
Speakers included :
- Gordon Oehler, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Nonproliferation Center
- Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
- Mark Holt, specialist in energy policy at the Congressional Research Service
- Christopher Griffin, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative
- Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association